Topical items and views on the impact of digitisation on publishing and its content and the issues that make the news. This blog follows the report 'Brave New World',
(http://www.ewidgetsonline.com/vcil/bravenewworld.html ), published by the Booksellers Association of the UK and Ireland and authored by Martyn Daniels. The views and comments expressed are those of the author.

Tuesday, October 05, 2010

PubIT Is Another Nail In Traditional Publishing Model

Barnes and Noble booksellers released their PubIt platform, which allows authors to self-publish ebooks titles to sell on their site.

Barnes and Noble is a publisher as well as a bookseller and long before it acquired Sterling it had a very successful reprint and packaging operation. Now it has ventured into the self publishing market with its PubIt service. The service allows authors and publishers to upload their ebooks for sale on the Barnes and Noble website. Obviously others such as Amazon have long recognised this opportunity and even struck exclusive channel deals on it.

PubIt, enables an author to register, upload their ebooks and book covers, and name their price within minutes. Authors receive 65 percent of any title that is priced between $2.98 and $10.00 and for titles priced below or above this band, royalties are reduced to 40 percent. This approach promotes the author to offer titles below $10 and above the free or very low pricing which could impact everyone’s revenues. I novel and clever approach to pricing that others could ;learn from. The split may not be as lucrative as Apple or Amazon's 70/30 split but if its not exclusive does that really matter?

In another move others could once again learn from authors can log in to PubIt and once their title is live, can track their sales. This removes the mystic of what is selling or not and gives the author power to react accordingly and even monitor any promotional activity.

Authors can upload their books from Microsoft Word, or RTF, TXT, or HTML. The PubIt tool then converts the file for use on Barnes and Noble's Nook ebook reader. PubIt can now be offered across Barnes and Noble’s entire family of NOOK products and software, including NOOK eBook Readers, third-party eBook Readers powered by the Barnes & Noble eBookstore, and NOOK software-enabled iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Android smartphones, and Windows-based PCs, laptops or netbooks.

Barnes and Noble can also monitor the winners and have the obvious opportunity to respond and negotiate with the author to turn these into POD or even full print runs for their stores.

Now if you are a mid or back list author why wouldn’t you revert your rights and and ensure you control your royalties to these major channels and outside of the traditional self publishing one.

4 comments:

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i believe that you can sell on a non exclusive basis and the other terms you also need to ensure is how and when you can remove your book. I will doulbe check the terms sheets on the majors this weekend

i believe that you can sell on a non exclusive basis and the other terms you also need to ensure is how and when you can remove your book. I will doulbe check the terms sheets on the majors this weekend

About Me

Before entering publishing I worked for many years as a Senior Executive in blue chip organisations in the retail, oil and automotive sectors. My publishing induction was initially as Director of Strategic Development at VISTA. There I was responsible for, and a contributor to, their highly acclaimed ‘Publishing in the 21st Century’ research series, the primary creator behind publishing services PubEasy and ‘batch.co.uk’, the initiator of the development of new Front Office systems to support publishers. In 2006 I joined Value Chain International(VCIL) initially as VP Marketing, Media and Publishing before becoming their President in 2009. In July 2011 the company's operations were acquired by Syncordia. I hold two non executive positions with publishing industry players Bibliophile Ltd and Haven Group and currently setting up Read Petite a service focused on providing digital short form material online via subscription.
Email mdaniels@opus57.co.uk